I've also read the flight attendant story - it was on a Russian or Eastern European airline IIRC. The plane broke up, the stewardess was forced into and held in the tail section by either air pressure or the G forces, and apparently the tail section's intact control surfaces were enough to slow it for a survivable landing.
Of course, I can't remember where I saw the story. I don't think it was online.
So essentially they're argument is that this was operator error. How exactly would the operator have done things differently so as to get their information out of the database correctly all 1000 out of 1000 times?
If this had been an open source database, it would have been fixed right the first time. Heck, if this had been an open source database, the DOE or the Russians could have audited the whole system from the ground up the instant they detected any problems.
This is only a story because a closed source vendor can't keep a handle on their bugs even when they are of literally world-changing importance.
Information obtained through reverse-engineering someone else's product is (or was, pre-DMCA) a legal way to learn about how something works. It's not "other people's information" once it's been legally reverse-engineered. Now, there's still a copyright on Adobe's code, and if they had applied for a patent on their encryption process then the information would still be theirs in a sense. But lacking a patent, it's no longer only their information once someone else reverse-engineers it.
I would say that ultimately the need for the public to have a right to reverse-engineer certain technologies is as important to the business community as the right to have some control over the distribution of certain information about your products. IMHO these needs were balanced pretty well before the DMCA but have been thrown quite out of whack since.
Actually, those aren't examples of obscurity but are actually real security - they're just like having a password (a possibly-easy-to-guess one ("speak, friend, and enter"), but still a password). In both cases the schematics of the door mechanisms, locks, etc. could have been laid before a thief, but they still couldn't have gained entrance without either a brute force attack or else knowing the shared secret - the password (I'm assuming here that neither type of door really had any mechanical defects, etc.)
Security through obscurity was more like Smaug the Dragon - if anyone could see the schematic of all of his armor, they would have immediately identified the weak point.
I'm not opposed to the normal civil trial process, I'm just opposed to this particular law. I wouldn't want to be in prison either, but on the other hand the tremendous civil penalties that losing a DMCA civil suit would bring could also ruin your life. The fact that you can now get arrested for violating this stupid, stupid law is secondary, in my mind, to the fact of the law's existence at all.
You're probably correct that in this case the human rights problem is much greater than the information rights problem. But in the long run, the right to information drives every other kind of right. This case, and others like it, is challenging some of the most fundamental human rights ever - the right to freedom of speech and the right to freedom of the press. Men have gone to prison, fought, and even died for these questionable and immaterial rights in the past; I'm sorry that the defendant is in prison and hope that nobody dies over this issue, but that doesn't mean that this would be somehow less important if only civil liability were at stake.
IMHO, someone controlling what you can say and think is a lot more dangerous than someone who can control your body. YMMV.
Well, I don't think they should be allowed to sue. The criminal bit wasn't the whole frickin' point when it was Emmanuel Goldstein being sued, remember. The law is wrong, whether it results in a civil trial or a criminal prosecution.
By this logic, I bet Adobe CEO John Warnock doensn't even have locks on his doors at home - his house is perfectly secure as long as passersby act legally. What a wonderful, utopian world he lives in - I wish my neighborhood was like that:)
What's really funny is that your post and the post below, both of which point out the truth that/. has had several articles covering this topic including links to relevant protest sites, etc., were marked "Flamebait". C'mon moderators - just because it's exciting to think about some sort of/. back-office conspiracy, doesn't make it true.
There was a court case, wasn't there? Civil, not criminal, though. Because at some point IIRC a judge ruled that Phoenix had pursued appropriate reverse-engineering practices. That is the relevant case law upon which "clean room" reverse engineering is based. The only thing missing at the time was the media attention.
It's interesting how corporations are "people" in some regards but not in others. Shouldn't the FBI be going after Elcomsoft the company, not just a programmer that works for them? If Elcomsoft was bankrupt, their creditors would only be able to seize the company, not individual employees' property; shouldn't employees be protected from criminal prosecution in the same way? Of course, this only makes sense if there are real ways to punish whole corporations; the current system of a slap-on-the-wrist fine for an essentially immortal corporation is insufficient.
P.S. Mirror the photos, please, it's going to be a long day for those web servers:)
The most significant thing you said: "brought in a lot of new voters". If a non-major-party candidate can energize the issues enough to attract exactly the people who are turned off by the normal political process, they can do very well. So maybe there is hope for the rest of us.
You're right about the running for office - assuming you can get media coverage, even if you're unelectable you can still force the debate into new channels towards what is really needed. Ralph Nader's last campaign was successful in this regard - he got issues on the table that neither candidate would have touched otherwise.
I'm not sure if just voting would cut it, though - both major parties combine a lack of knowledge of technology with a willingness to take the advice of giant technology companies at face value. In this last election, can you really say that electing Al Gore would really have changed the technology perspective? Remember, Verisign/NSI and even ICANN got the way they are while he was VP and self-identified as the tech-savvy guy in the White House. He's not magically going to become a/. devotée just because he was elected President.
Voting is only a sufficient check on the government if there are sufficient choices to vote for that the real will of the people can become known. As far as technology goes, there aren't really any forward-looking choices to vote for yet, just different flavors of tech reactionaries and big-business sycophants. Thus the will of the people in this direction, assuming that they even have one, won't be expressed.
I'm just pointing out the possibilities here. Just like Microsoft doesn't really go after software piracy unless it would significantly improve their public image or bottom line, they're probably even OK with small-scale copyright infringement since it still ties you to a Microsoft OS. But if you're working on a project or a technology that is a legitimate competitor to Microsoft, even if you're not really infringining on their IP, you have to expect a variety of dirty tricks from the 800-pound gorilla of the industry. Potential tainting from this source code is just one of the possibilities.
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So Taco didn't pay the images bill again, or is it just a bad link?
Fortunately for you, you don't have nearly a devious-enough mind to work for Microsoft (not that I do either). You see, it's not so much the license as it is the code itself, copyright law, and the existing legal system. Let's take this one concept at a time:
Distribution of the software must be under the Microsoft license.
You are allowed to distribute derivatives.
Since derivative works still contain copyrighted code from the original author (Microsoft), any derivatives you distribute must be under the Microsoft license. This is the way almost all source code licenses work; if they didn't work this way then you could totally rip off Microsoft's code by making a small unimportant change to create a meaningless derivative that is not under their license. So it's pretty clear that their license applies to your derivative of their code.
If you look at the Microsoft code, any code that you write in the future that looks like Microsoft's may be reasonably considered to be copied from it. You are "tainted" in that case. This is established copyright law.
If you work on an open source project, you may write code. It usually works better that way, at least.
You've probably not chosen the Microsoft shared source license for your open source project.
Your code may look like the Microsoft code from above. In certain application arenas it's quite likely that you'd write similar-looking code to do tasks that are essentially the same as the ones Microsoft's code is doing.
Microsoft has a lot more money and lawyers than you do, for almost any value of "you". More on this later.
If you distribute your open source project's code, Microsoft can argue that you're distributing their code (remember, you're tainted) and force you to change your project's license.
Even worse, if you have ever looked at Microsoft's code, they can accuse you of violating their license at any time and subject you to a lengthy court trial with expensive legal fees even if you're innocent, because of the aforementioned money and lawyers deficit on your part. Technically they still have the burden of proof, but a pre-trial injunction can stop your project's distribution until a year or two later when you are cleared of their charges. Assuming you even want to go to trial to defend yourself, that is. Yes, it's not fair, but that's never stopped Microsoft before.
Result: your project is subject to Microsoft's demands, and effectively all development grinds to a halt.
Thus, it's not unacceptable FUD if you've actually taken the time to think through the potential consequences of your actions. There are legitimate concerns about looking at Microsoft's source code, and those concerns should cause a reasonable person (meaning "person without a lot of lawyers on hand") to experience fear, uncertainty, and doubt about this license. FUD has a bad name, because it's been slung around without reason. Where there's reason to be cautious, though, only a fool doesn't experience FUD.
You may say that this is a particularly pessimistic view of Microsoft, and I agree that it is. But I would ask you to review the recent history of software law adjudicated between poor individual developers and giant software companies, and then also consider the past history between giant software companies and the behemoth Microsoft, and tell me that there's no way this could come to pass. I don't think you can.
So, Chester, don't accuse me of spouting FUD if you're willing to take Microsoft's words and actions at face value. They've spewed a lot more unjustified FUD in the last few years than I ever will in a lifetime, I promise you.
I think looking at the source would be a great way to deep-six any open source projects you're working on at the time. Heck, even if you're a commercial developer, you should really have your legal team consider your position before looking at this code - the last thing you want to have to do is prove that you didn't use any of Microsoft's code in your commercial product. Remember, you don't have to be in the wrong to be dragged through a lengthy court battle and/or an expensive settlement.
I can see the WinCE source code being very useful for developers that work on that platform and already have a close working relationship with Microsoft, but it seems to provide more risk than benefit to everyone else.
Does that back up your previous known good kernel before installing the new one? If so I might try it, otherwise no way. I've burned myself enough times to not have total confidence in my ability to configure a bootable kernel correctly the first time:)
(P1): arch/i386, arch/ppc, arch/sparc? These are all very confusing
(P2): gzip or bzip2 - this is a sort of browser, right? There are too many choices.
(P3): I couldn't find an icon for this "lilo" thing - it wasn't under the "foot" menu.
(P4): It said I was eaten by a grue, and I can't continue configuring it. What's a grue?
In all seriousness, great job to Sun for their Gnome Useability Report earlier today. This post is in honor of their hard work - hopefully Sun won't ask them to investigate kernel build process usability until they've rested up a little:)
Yes, and the lack of standardization of VB, VC++, MFC, etc. have resulted in their complete failure to be used in the industry, right? Microsoft makes its own standards whether they have the official seal of approval or not; the only reason they announced a standardization effort for.NET was to one-up Sun in the process. It was all a big ruse, as proven by this exact story in which Microsoft says that they won't let competitors implement the standard.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't believe I wrote "they're" instead of "their". My own post is now making me cringe in shame - no more grammar flaming from me for a while :)
I've also read the flight attendant story - it was on a Russian or Eastern European airline IIRC. The plane broke up, the stewardess was forced into and held in the tail section by either air pressure or the G forces, and apparently the tail section's intact control surfaces were enough to slow it for a survivable landing.
Of course, I can't remember where I saw the story. I don't think it was online.
strangely apropos...
I'm still looking for that crashed alien ship with a big green lantern inside...
So essentially they're argument is that this was operator error. How exactly would the operator have done things differently so as to get their information out of the database correctly all 1000 out of 1000 times?
If this had been an open source database, it would have been fixed right the first time. Heck, if this had been an open source database, the DOE or the Russians could have audited the whole system from the ground up the instant they detected any problems.
This is only a story because a closed source vendor can't keep a handle on their bugs even when they are of literally world-changing importance.
Information obtained through reverse-engineering someone else's product is (or was, pre-DMCA) a legal way to learn about how something works. It's not "other people's information" once it's been legally reverse-engineered. Now, there's still a copyright on Adobe's code, and if they had applied for a patent on their encryption process then the information would still be theirs in a sense. But lacking a patent, it's no longer only their information once someone else reverse-engineers it.
I would say that ultimately the need for the public to have a right to reverse-engineer certain technologies is as important to the business community as the right to have some control over the distribution of certain information about your products. IMHO these needs were balanced pretty well before the DMCA but have been thrown quite out of whack since.
Bonus points if they give him Illustrator too :)
Actually, those aren't examples of obscurity but are actually real security - they're just like having a password (a possibly-easy-to-guess one ("speak, friend, and enter"), but still a password). In both cases the schematics of the door mechanisms, locks, etc. could have been laid before a thief, but they still couldn't have gained entrance without either a brute force attack or else knowing the shared secret - the password (I'm assuming here that neither type of door really had any mechanical defects, etc.)
Security through obscurity was more like Smaug the Dragon - if anyone could see the schematic of all of his armor, they would have immediately identified the weak point.
I'm not opposed to the normal civil trial process, I'm just opposed to this particular law. I wouldn't want to be in prison either, but on the other hand the tremendous civil penalties that losing a DMCA civil suit would bring could also ruin your life. The fact that you can now get arrested for violating this stupid, stupid law is secondary, in my mind, to the fact of the law's existence at all.
You're probably correct that in this case the human rights problem is much greater than the information rights problem. But in the long run, the right to information drives every other kind of right. This case, and others like it, is challenging some of the most fundamental human rights ever - the right to freedom of speech and the right to freedom of the press. Men have gone to prison, fought, and even died for these questionable and immaterial rights in the past; I'm sorry that the defendant is in prison and hope that nobody dies over this issue, but that doesn't mean that this would be somehow less important if only civil liability were at stake.
IMHO, someone controlling what you can say and think is a lot more dangerous than someone who can control your body. YMMV.
Well, I don't think they should be allowed to sue. The criminal bit wasn't the whole frickin' point when it was Emmanuel Goldstein being sued, remember. The law is wrong, whether it results in a civil trial or a criminal prosecution.
By this logic, I bet Adobe CEO John Warnock doensn't even have locks on his doors at home - his house is perfectly secure as long as passersby act legally. What a wonderful, utopian world he lives in - I wish my neighborhood was like that :)
What's really funny is that your post and the post below, both of which point out the truth that /. has had several articles covering this topic including links to relevant protest sites, etc., were marked "Flamebait". C'mon moderators - just because it's exciting to think about some sort of /. back-office conspiracy, doesn't make it true.
Remember: think twice, moderate once.
There was a court case, wasn't there? Civil, not criminal, though. Because at some point IIRC a judge ruled that Phoenix had pursued appropriate reverse-engineering practices. That is the relevant case law upon which "clean room" reverse engineering is based. The only thing missing at the time was the media attention.
It's interesting how corporations are "people" in some regards but not in others. Shouldn't the FBI be going after Elcomsoft the company, not just a programmer that works for them? If Elcomsoft was bankrupt, their creditors would only be able to seize the company, not individual employees' property; shouldn't employees be protected from criminal prosecution in the same way? Of course, this only makes sense if there are real ways to punish whole corporations; the current system of a slap-on-the-wrist fine for an essentially immortal corporation is insufficient.
P.S. Mirror the photos, please, it's going to be a long day for those web servers :)
The most significant thing you said: "brought in a lot of new voters". If a non-major-party candidate can energize the issues enough to attract exactly the people who are turned off by the normal political process, they can do very well. So maybe there is hope for the rest of us.
Seems to be fixed now, please disregard.
You're right about the running for office - assuming you can get media coverage, even if you're unelectable you can still force the debate into new channels towards what is really needed. Ralph Nader's last campaign was successful in this regard - he got issues on the table that neither candidate would have touched otherwise.
I'm not sure if just voting would cut it, though - both major parties combine a lack of knowledge of technology with a willingness to take the advice of giant technology companies at face value. In this last election, can you really say that electing Al Gore would really have changed the technology perspective? Remember, Verisign/NSI and even ICANN got the way they are while he was VP and self-identified as the tech-savvy guy in the White House. He's not magically going to become a /. devotée just because he was elected President.
Voting is only a sufficient check on the government if there are sufficient choices to vote for that the real will of the people can become known. As far as technology goes, there aren't really any forward-looking choices to vote for yet, just different flavors of tech reactionaries and big-business sycophants. Thus the will of the people in this direction, assuming that they even have one, won't be expressed.
I dunno, .me would work pretty well too. You could have fuck.me, etc. Is that even used as a CC yet?
I'm just pointing out the possibilities here. Just like Microsoft doesn't really go after software piracy unless it would significantly improve their public image or bottom line, they're probably even OK with small-scale copyright infringement since it still ties you to a Microsoft OS. But if you're working on a project or a technology that is a legitimate competitor to Microsoft, even if you're not really infringining on their IP, you have to expect a variety of dirty tricks from the 800-pound gorilla of the industry. Potential tainting from this source code is just one of the possibilities.
So Taco didn't pay the images bill again, or is it just a bad link?
http://www.animefu.com?node_id=5568
Fortunately for you, you don't have nearly a devious-enough mind to work for Microsoft (not that I do either). You see, it's not so much the license as it is the code itself, copyright law, and the existing legal system. Let's take this one concept at a time:
Thus, it's not unacceptable FUD if you've actually taken the time to think through the potential consequences of your actions. There are legitimate concerns about looking at Microsoft's source code, and those concerns should cause a reasonable person (meaning "person without a lot of lawyers on hand") to experience fear, uncertainty, and doubt about this license. FUD has a bad name, because it's been slung around without reason. Where there's reason to be cautious, though, only a fool doesn't experience FUD.
You may say that this is a particularly pessimistic view of Microsoft, and I agree that it is. But I would ask you to review the recent history of software law adjudicated between poor individual developers and giant software companies, and then also consider the past history between giant software companies and the behemoth Microsoft, and tell me that there's no way this could come to pass. I don't think you can.
So, Chester, don't accuse me of spouting FUD if you're willing to take Microsoft's words and actions at face value. They've spewed a lot more unjustified FUD in the last few years than I ever will in a lifetime, I promise you.
I think looking at the source would be a great way to deep-six any open source projects you're working on at the time. Heck, even if you're a commercial developer, you should really have your legal team consider your position before looking at this code - the last thing you want to have to do is prove that you didn't use any of Microsoft's code in your commercial product. Remember, you don't have to be in the wrong to be dragged through a lengthy court battle and/or an expensive settlement.
I can see the WinCE source code being very useful for developers that work on that platform and already have a close working relationship with Microsoft, but it seems to provide more risk than benefit to everyone else.
Does that back up your previous known good kernel before installing the new one? If so I might try it, otherwise no way. I've burned myself enough times to not have total confidence in my ability to configure a bootable kernel correctly the first time :)
(P1): arch/i386, arch/ppc, arch/sparc? These are all very confusing
(P2): gzip or bzip2 - this is a sort of browser, right? There are too many choices.
(P3): I couldn't find an icon for this "lilo" thing - it wasn't under the "foot" menu.
(P4): It said I was eaten by a grue, and I can't continue configuring it. What's a grue?
In all seriousness, great job to Sun for their Gnome Useability Report earlier today. This post is in honor of their hard work - hopefully Sun won't ask them to investigate kernel build process usability until they've rested up a little :)
Yes, and the lack of standardization of VB, VC++, MFC, etc. have resulted in their complete failure to be used in the industry, right? Microsoft makes its own standards whether they have the official seal of approval or not; the only reason they announced a standardization effort for .NET was to one-up Sun in the process. It was all a big ruse, as proven by this exact story in which Microsoft says that they won't let competitors implement the standard.